


Sad Day for Happiness

by RiverSoul



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Light Angst, M/M, Rambling, sadGreg
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-07
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:19:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverSoul/pseuds/RiverSoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg's wife has left him and he is re-thinking his life. He married one girl while wanting someone else entirely and now John is about to marry this horrible woman he is sharing a secret with. But there's nobody there who could help Greg or even understand him... nobody but one man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Greg felt like he was 16 again. A 16-year old with a lot of memories. He didn’t even feel like drinking; there was beer in the fridge, but drinking it wouldn’t change anything. Greg had felt bad about drinking for so many times. His wife had always nagged him about it, made him feel guilty almost every time he got drunk. Then there had been other times, when he had just wanted to keep a clear head. But now it didn’t matter anymore. He could drink, but he just didn’t want to. It was like the urge was completely gone, just like any other urge, really. He just sat on his kitchen chair and stared out of the window, into the dark. Greg didn’t even want to move to the living room, get comfortable or something. He didn’t even want to put something warmer on, cause it was getting cold. 

Greg laughed mirthlessly. Wasn’t it always getting cold? He remembered the traffic accident he had just been to. A girl had survived; her parents had died. They gave her a blanket and tea, cause she was cold. Also for the shock, of course, but mostly because it was a darn cold night. And then when Greg’s wife had left him, hadn’t it also been cold? Maybe not, maybe his brain was just playing tricks on him…

He was so sick of his brain, of all this thinking, all this brooding! Sometimes he could really understand Sherlock. The detective must have so many more depressing thoughts going through his mind and so much more time thinking them. Greg should really feel lucky not being him. 

But then he didn’t feel lucky. The opposite of lucky, really. Tomorrow was John’s wedding. He wouldn’t marry who he was supposed to marry, though. No, he would marry some nice girl from next door; or at least that was how she looked like. Greg knew better, though. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me… Life had already messed with him a lot and he still hadn’t learnt from it. His wife had cheated on him so much, he actually had been more worried about catching a STD from her than about catching her with a lover. 

And then this vibrant blond came into his life and here he went again… She hadn’t even cheated on him, no, she had made a day out of it and cheated with him on his best mate. Or who he considered as his best mate, anyway. Who certainly wouldn’t be his best mate anymore if he knew the truth. 

For best mates they weren’t really that close. If this had happened with some other bloke’s fiancé, Greg wasn’t even sure he would have told John. Too embarrassing, actually. And it had been just a shag, really. Not that HE had the right to feel cheated on. Greg did feel cheated on, though. He felt tricked, betrayed, fucked by destiny. 

And this was really how he had felt like when he was 16. So self-absorbed and always ready to feel sorry for himself. Not in front of others, of course. Oh no, everybody had to think that he, Gregory Lestrade, was the impersonation of happiness. Always willing to have a beer with his mates, never letting on that he actually felt miserable spending his time with some blokes who couldn’t talk about anything else than football, beer and women. And he hadn’t even been interested in women when he was 16. 

But you can get used to anything, really, get to like everything. So Greg had started dating women and the sex hadn’t been all bad. They had told him he was good in bed. Well, of course he was! He bloody well knew why it hadn’t been hard for him not to come as soon as he was ‘inside’. Cause he hadn’t really wanted to be inside a woman, that was why! He had soon gotten the hang of pretending, though. His wife had been the first to call him on not enjoying sex much.   
And then Greg had met Mycroft Holmes and everything had changed. Except nothing had changed, only his long forgotten feelings had come back. And it wasn’t like Mycroft would fall for him and they would live happily ever after. Mycroft didn’t even knew him. Well, he knew him, of course. Probably even had a file about him. But this didn’t mean he was interested in him. This didn’t mean Greg would come out of his cave and start living an honest life, be honest with himself for once. 

When he was younger, Greg had had trouble with his temper. He had gotten this under control, also because both his parents and his teachers had told him he would get in serious trouble sooner or later if he didn’t get a grip on himself. But then the temper was coming back. Greg could feel it. He wasn’t stupid enough to let it show, of course. But sometimes he felt like he could tear somebody apart. He had thrown his mobile against the wall of his living room a few times. Not that it had helped.

Now he was listening to the same song again and again. Greg remembered when he had first listened to it with his first girlfriend. He remembered how he had felt like. And how he had not felt like. He missed that time. Not because it had been especially nice, just because he could have made a change then. Greg could have made a different decision and not go out with that girl. But he had been afraid to ‘die a virgin’. Literally. Not die alone or anything romantic like that, but to never have sex in his life. Sure, that was what most guys his age had been worried about. And then he hadn’t known what he was starting. That he would choose a certain way of life by going out with this girl. 

Greg had met a lot of men who were in denial about their sexuality. But he wasn’t just in denial. He knew exactly who he was and what he liked and that his whole life was fake. Greg had decided to keep it that way and that was that. Better to be accepted and have friend than to hunt after that ‘one big love’ which probably wouldn’t come along anyway. 

Because Greg had never been in love. He hadn’t really missed anything cause there had been no one to miss. And sex with women was ok, he could live with that, even enjoy that. He had two strong hands too, when he got lonely. And he had gotten so good at faking it that not even Sherlock had figured him out. Which was sad, really. Because if the detective had found out about him, he would have probably shouted it out to the world. Sherlock didn’t have a filter for personal stuff like that. And Greg wouldn’t have to make a decision now. Not that he didn’t know how his decision would look like. He had thought about it long and wide and had always done the exact same about it afterwards: nothing.

So he could keep on staring into the dark and feel sorry about himself. Or he could do something about it. Something reckless if necessary. Except, there wasn’t anybody still awake to listen to his recklessness. Or watch him being reckless or whatever. 

Greg sighed and got up from his chair. Time to go to bed and feel absolutely idiotic about the two last hours wasted on doing nothing. When he actually needed the sleep. 

Crossing the living room to get to his bedroom, Greg’s eyes fell on his mobile, which was still lying on the floor next to the sofa. He picked it up to carry it to set the alarm for tomorrow, but hesitated. What if he didn’t get up tomorrow? Let the world go to hell and sleep in. Maybe somebody would even miss him. 

Yea, right, and there he was again, thinking like his 16-year old self. He set the alarm and made his way to the living room, but then paused in front of his bed. He would wake up alone in it tomorrow. 

Before he could change his mind about this – cause this was utterly ridiculous – he sent a message to Mycroft:

“Switch the news off, go to sleep  
fight the tears in misery  
I've exchanged my childhood dreams  
for a bunch of make-believes”

Mycroft would understand. If he didn’t, no one would.


	2. Chapter 2

Greg didn’t hear from Mycroft for three days. Those were the worst days of his life. Well, when he was younger, he had thought this on a regular basis, hadn’t he? He had been quite the drama queen. Maybe that was why he could cope with Sherlock better than others. 

The first thought which came to his mind was that Mycroft hadn’t received the message. So he double checked that he had sent it. But the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that Mycroft just didn’t care to reply. “He’s probably just busy,” Greg told himself. But of course there were also the other options: Mycroft could think he was crazy or not important enough to reply to. Greg didn’t even know which option was worse. Given the circumstances, he thought it more likely that the elder Holmes thought her had gone completely round the bend now. 

Which was ok, really. Everything was better than to be ignored. But then Mycroft Holmes was ALWAYS busy. Maybe he had just something more important to do. He was the most intelligent man Greg knew, he had probably figured him out. He probably knew from the moment they had met for the first time how Greg felt about him. And he probably didn’t care. He had a country to run, why should he care that one silly little police officer was having a midlife crisis or something? Rethinking his life choices, thinking he was completely useless and that no matter how many murders he solved there was probably always someone who was better at it. 

Why should Mycroft care? Why should anyone care? Nobody had cared so far and why should that change now? Greg remembered this one moment he had had with Sherlock when he was sure he could tell the detective everything… And then Greg had discovered that the detective was shooting up again. Which was perfect, really. Life was grinning at him and saying “see, some people have REAL problems”. 

And real problems they had. Even his wife had had more ‘real’ problems than him. I mean, obviously being late too meet up with some friends cause she had to clean up his vomit was the mayor tragedy of her life. Never mind that he had thrown up cause he had seen a murder victim for the first time. 

Those were the times, really. Back then he had thought the worst which could happen to him was to be stuck in a bad marriage. That he would either come back out of it or take to drinking. Either way, people would feel sorry for him. People didn’t know, of course, cause he never told them anything, but if they had known they would have… 

Greg could get so angry at people who ignored him. The more time past, the more he wanted to kick Mycroft’s fat ass. He wasn’t fat, of course, but this was his weak spot and Greg wanted to hurt him. He wanted to shout into his face that he didn’t need him. That he could get his shit together himself. That he had never needed anyone and that relying on people had never ended well. 

Greg remembered when he was a kid and his mum had caught him with his hand in her purse. He had never meant to steal from her, but this boy at school had told him how easy it was and it had been kind of a dare… Anyways, he had been so ashamed and his mum had to promise him to never tell anyone after she had grounded him for several weeks. A few days later, he had overheard her telling the story to her sister. She hadn’t even bothered to make sure he couldn’t hear her. Because it was ‘only’ her sister who had trouble with her own kids so she had to give her a little cheer up. Cheer up as in “see, my son is worse”, probably.

At least that had taught Greg a lesson. The lesson to never trust anyone. Sure, you could trust your mates with little things like which chick you found hot and that you sometimes had to throw up after only a few beers. You could even tell them that you didn’t really love your wife and that she was a bitch, most of the time. You know, with little things. But not with the big picture, never with the big picture. 

Blokes got annoyed with that, of course. You couldn’t always stay ‘mystery man’ and you could only tell them so often that you were too busy at work to go to the pub. So Greg had stuck to himself. And every time he had tried to be ‘more social’, he had regretted it. Keeping busy was much easier. Playing the overworked little police officer who was really committed to his job and didn’t think of anything else. 

Even Sherlock’s company was better then ‘normal’ people’s company, cause he didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t care more about Greg than the next guy, but at least he didn’t pretend that he did. Mycroft on the other hand… Mycroft could be a real friend. Mycroft could really hurt him. Every second he spend with him could give Greg hope. And hope was dangerous. Mycroft could show him how wonderful life could be and then take it all away again in the wink of an eye. And he didn’t even need to do anything for that. Mycroft just had to be there, maybe exchange a few words with Greg and the DI’s imagination would do the rest. 

Maybe it was already too late. Maybe Greg had already started hoping. And the best which ever came from that was somebody else’s pain. The worst, his own. 

Then the message arrived:

“Touch the button  
you should sit and listen  
Watching as a tear  
rains into a broken heart”

Greg could only star at it for a minute. Those were the next few lines of the lyrics he had sent Mycroft! But of course he shouldn’t have expected anything else from the genius. Suddenly he wasn’t sad anymore. He was angry. Blind with fury. “Come on, play with my heart, why don’t you?”, he thought. “Play with my dreams, my hopes, pretend to yourself that you even care… then cry me a river if you ‘have to’ break my heart cause you just ‘can’t keep on hurting me’.” He had heard it all before, seen it all before; he had enough of it, finally enough!

“Took you awfully long to find out a few lines”, he wrote back. 

“It's a sad day for happiness  
in this crazy world  
It's a crazy world  
so all we can do is be  
a little crazy to save today”

was the only answer.


	3. Chapter 3

Mycroft stared at the message on his mobile:

“Switch the news off, go to sleep  
fight the tears in misery  
I've exchanged my childhood dreams  
for a bunch of make-believes”

It wasn’t signed, but he recognized the number to be Gregory Lestrade’s. He didn’t recognize the lyrics, but it must be from a song; the DI didn’t write like that. Gregory wasn’t drunk either, as Mycroft expected him to make at least a few spelling errors when under the influence. But what did it mean then? That the man was in pain, certainly, but why did he turn to him of all people? Mycroft had never been good at comforting people, least of all those he cared about. 

Not that caring was an advantage, of course, and it had been almost too easy for Mycroft not to form any kind of attachment to more than a few people in his life. And then he was usually good at hiding his feelings towards those few.

With Gregory Lestrade, it was more complicated, though. They had only met on a handful of occasions and then it had been mostly about Sherlock. Still he felt like they had formed some sort of bond, which he couldn’t put down to family relations, professional dependency or… anything, really. He just liked the DI; trusted him, actually. And now Gregory seemed to trust him back.

This was ok, of course, Mycroft could have used his connections for almost anything Gregory wished for… his time and money too, come to that. But Mycroft had no clue what he was supposed to do with Gregory’s feelings. Pity him? Surely not. Buy him something nice or take him out for dinner? If a man like Gregory resorted to poetry, his depression had to be too deep-rooted for superficial amusements like that. Usually, the DI didn’t have any trouble finding the right words, and if he didn’t, he wasn’t bothered to use the wrong ones. To steal somebody else’s words, he had to be either truly, madly, deeply in love or truly, madly, deeply in anguish. 

Mycroft was used to Sherlock’s tantrums and mediocre life dramas, but those were usually caused by either ‘a case’ or ‘no case’. Both situations could usually be resolved quite easily; and if they couldn’t be, it was usually enough to stick around and they resolved themselves. When Sherlock had taken an overdose of heroine, his older brother had feared for his life, not for his soul. Sherlock hadn’t taken too much heroine cause he had wanted to end his life, but because he had wanted to enhance it. Just another experiment, so to speak. 

If Gregory kept on like this, he could seriously hurt himself, emotionally, not physically. Mycroft knew from his own experience that some thoughts were better left unthought, that some memories were better left alone. He knew that if he hadn’t gotten there in time, Sherlock would be dead now. But thinking about this didn’t change anything for the better. It did neither improve his chances in the past to have saved Sherlock, not his chances to save him in the future, should he get into a similar situation again. However, Mycroft couldn’t help but think about it sometimes. Nobody had ever witnessed one of his ‘dark moods’, as he called them, of course. He usually sent the staff home, locked himself in the living room and had a whisky or two. Sometimes those moods just passed, sometimes he shed a tear or two, but nothing dramatic. 

However, Mycroft knew how desperate one could feel in this state. Despite his position in the government, he sometimes felt so useless, then, as if his whole life didn’t have a point. And this anger, which flashed up inside of him, was sometimes almost unbearable. He couldn’t stop people from dying and sometimes the wrong people died; he couldn’t punish all of the people who caused those deaths either. Or at least not enough. And how much worse must Gregory feel about this? He saw murdered people all the time, sometimes even murdered children, but sometimes didn’t even have the power to punish their murderers. Mycroft helped with that, of course. Sherlock helped too. Which was one of the reasons why Mycroft had brought those two together.

But what if there was another pain in Gregory’s heart, one Mycroft couldn’t subdue? And those lines seemed to indicate quite some different kind of pain. Which ‘childhood dreams’ did Gregory refer to? Being a police officer and fighting crime seemed to fit his way of thinking just fine, but Mycroft didn’t know the DI that well. Maybe he just preferred to solve more crimes, punish more criminals for what they had done? But Gregory wasn’t such a romantic man that he would refer to ‘brining justice to the world’ in this way. What else did children dream of? Happiness? Grow up and improve their own lives?

Certainly, Gregory Lestrade’s marriage hadn’t been a successful one, to say the least. Mycroft knew Gregory’s parents had split up when he was 12, but this couldn’t still hunt the DI. Especially as he didn’t have any children on his own. Or was this what he wanted? Children? Mycroft didn’t think that Gregory had suddenly gotten the urge to breed, without a suitable female go with it. And a suitable woman certainly wasn’t in sight anywhere near the DI at the moment. 

In fact, Mycroft had never seen any ‘suitable woman’ near Gregory; nor had any of the women Gregory had been dating in the past seem suitable for him. Mycroft checked the DI’s file, but his memory hadn’t betrayed him: All the women Gregory had dated were attractive (if you were into skinny blonds and curvy brunettes), more or less intelligent, a few years his junior, successful in their jobs, but not average… Mycroft recognized a pattern: It looked as if Gregory had chosen his girlfriends from a catalogue rather than according to his own preferences; just as Mycroft chose undercover agents sometimes, if they had to fit into a certain setting. And it was for the same reason, the ID had to have chosen girlfriends at all: As a cover. 

It became more and more clear to Mycroft what Gregory’s childhood dreams just might have been like: growing up, being happy… but being happy with a man. Obviously, Gregory’s friends and colleagues weren’t the type of people who would just go along with a dream like this, though. There would have been a lot of confusion, pain, resentment, maybe even anger, which would leave Gregory not quite an outcast, but would reduce his number of friends and friendly colleagues quite dramatically. Gregory could have chosen different friends, of course, but then he wouldn’t have fit in either. He just wasn’t the ‘typical gay man’ – if something like this even existed – but counted beer, football and his mates among his favourite things in life. In fact, Gregory Lestrade would be the prototype of a British straight man – if only for the fact that he was actually more interested in men than women. 

Mycroft could almost feel his pain. The ‘transition period’ had been painful for him too: when he had realized that he wasn’t like the others and would never have real friends, so it would be better not to have friends at all. However it had been so much worse not to go through all of this and come out stronger on the other side, but live among people who didn’t really understand him and never would. Mycroft hated the very thought of it. Pretending for his job was one thing; it was mostly just about manners, really. Pretending in his private life seemed like hell to him, though; smiling at the wrong opinions, laughing when he didn’t feel like it and talking about topics which don’t interest you should be politics only, not what was considered your ‘free time’. 

But as Mycroft didn’t really know how to comfort Gregory and if he was the right person for it at any rate, he at first didn’t write back. What if he would make Gregory’s pain worse? What if they were in fact too similar and, while getting to know each other better, would slowly start destroying each other? Mycroft, unlike his brother, wasn’t prone to drama, but in this case he rather knew himself not well enough to predict possible outcomes. 

However, the longer he waited, the more Mycroft hurt. One night he lay down to sleep and it felt like every breath he took burnt, as he couldn’t stop thinking of what Gregory was feeling/thinking/doing right now. In how much pain he could/might/must be in.

This had to stop! It was becoming ridiculous. He googled the lines Gregory had sent him and sent some more back, just to do something:

“Touch the button  
you should sit and listen  
Watching as a tear  
rains into a broken heart”

“Took you awfully long to find out a few lines”, Gregory wrote back:

“It's a sad day for happiness  
in this crazy world  
It's a crazy world  
so all we can do is be  
a little crazy to save today”, Mycroft typed, frowning. 

There was actually hope in this sad song. Had Gregory planned this? Had he actually hoped for this to turn out that way, so they could be ‘a little crazy’ together? Mycroft’s frown turned into a smile. He actually didn’t mind caring for Gregory that much.


End file.
